Proper financial management of a dairy herd requires proper record keeping and attendance to the productivity of cows within a herd. Milk output is an obvious indicator as to productivity and physical condition of any one cow. Therefore it has become standard operating procedure to monitor the quantity of each cow's milk delivery.
Such records are necessary for anyone wishing to operate in this field and therefore a proper measuring unit or meter must be equally operative in both parlor or stanchion conditions to accommodate the physical accommodation of the herd. Health requirements must also be considered and therefore it is necessary to provide a unit that is easily cleaned and sanitized as necessary.
Certain aspects in the measuring of pulsating fluids must be considered with the first, most obvious, being that of true flow rate determination. To accommodate this determination, pulsation or turbulence of flow must be considerably reduced prior to measurement. With the applicants' device the measuring or monitoring of the liquid takes place subsequent to reduction of such turbulence or pulsation effects.
With a turbulently flowing liquid, foam often results. Applicants' device accommodates for the separation of foam from the fluid to a true, flow rate.
It is therefore an object of the applicants' invention to provide a metering device particularly adapted for a determination of milk flow rates as delivered from a milking machine which delivers the milk in a pulsating state.
It is a further object of the applicants' invention to provide a milk metering unit which includes a first introductory chamber to receive the milk and substantially reduce the flow velocity of the milk with delivery thereof to a second baffled chamber whose baffling further assists in turbulent flow reduction an foam separation with a measuring chamber provided thereafter to measure the oscillating level of the liquid within the chamber after such flow turbulence has been substantially reduced and the foam has been substantially separated from the liquid to be measured.
It is still a further object of the applicants' invention to provide a metering device particularly adapted for the measuring of milk flow rates which includes a measuring chamber downstream from an orifice having a plurality of level monitoring probes arranged in vertical relation therein with the output of the probes, in conjunction with a first base probe, being rapidly monitored to determine the level fluctuations of the milk within the chamber at discrete times.
It is yet a further object of the applicants' invention to provide a milk metering device having a downstream measuring chamber having a plurality of vertical probes therein and having an introductory, vertically arranged, tapered orifice controlling the introduction of milk into the chamber.
It is yet a further object of the applicants' invention to provide a milk metering device and processor therefore which includes successive approximation o sequential probe monitoring techniques for gathering of fluid flow data.
It is still a further object of the applicants' invention to provide a milk metering device which provides for gas and liquid separation with the gas ultimately directed to dry the separated liquid from areas that could conduct and deliver false flow data to a data processor.
These and other objects and advantages of the applicants' invention will more fully appear from a consideration of the accompanying disclosure made in association with the provided drawings.